When I first read that it should be something more than just getting ready in the morning my brain immediately went to driving. First I got a sound of a car door closing, and then I got one of a car starting. I then proceeded to find a clip of a car driving at what sounded like high speeds. At this point I needed two more sound clips to reach the five minimum.

The high speed gave me the idea to make the story a car crash. Next I added the clip of the car crashing. I however at this point forgot to add a fifth sound. I had unfortunately uploaded the video and closed out of audacity when I realized i needed one more clip. Below is an Image of my audacity board after I added the fifth sound of texting. Texting not only helped me meet the requirement of five sounds but it also helped complete the story as a whole.

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Overall I think my track does tell a story really well. This assignment is however one of my most hated assignments ever. This is not because of the assignment itself or even working with audacity. I hate this assignment because of working with Soundcloud. For some reason they thought I was using copyrighted music from a k-pop band. I have no clue why they thought this however it caused me a lot of frustration. Soundcloud had taken down my original clip and after a frustrating appeal, I got it reinstated. I then however, realized that I needed a fifth sound and I had to go through the process yet again. For this reason alone I was not a fan of the assignment.

For my sounds I choose a seagull, wind blowing, waves crashing, and people talking. I choose this as all the sounds together remind me of going to the beach on the weekends with my family. I purposefully have all the sounds play together instead of at different times. When at the beach all of these sounds are occurring at once instead of separately and as such it made more sense to do it that way.

For my first daily create I found a picture that described what I would see if I looked through a kaleidoscope. I choose this image to describe what I would see because my two favorite colors are red and black. The colors as well as the pattern were really nice. Additionally the image isn’t what one would normally expect to see when looking through a kaleidoscope. For these reasons I choose this picture.

My second daily create called for making an image that emphasized idling. Do to this I used canva. I knew I wanted a dog to be the center of the poster, mainly because my dog loves to stand staring out in to space. She especially loves to do so when she’s in the way. I went on to canva and looked up dogs. I saw this picture and knew I could change the wording to make it in to my poster.

This week involved a lot of reflection, for my first reflection I listened to two Youtube videos and view a resource page. I did like the the first video where Jab talks about co-authorship/co-imagination. I did however feel that his second video failed to provide any facts to back up his arquement. Further I found his arquement in the second video to be far too overly simplified, ignoring very basic differences between shamans and those using audio now a days. I additionally found the resources page useful however I am not looking forward to using audacity.

The other reflection of the week involved listening to Moon Graffiti. Overall this was much more enjoyable then the first reflection. It also served as the most valuable teacher on how to use audio. The atmosphere and emotions brought on by the audio shows how audio can be used practically. I additionally found the idea interesting, tying in well with the alternate history theme of last week.

For my class participation this week I kept up my participation in blogs, commenting to the following posts.

Overall I thought I did well this week. The daily creates were not especially fun compared to the prior weeks. As well I wasn’t a big fan of one of the videos. I was however a fan of Moon Graffiti and I enjoyed listening to it.

This week we were meant to listen to Moon graffiti. I found the piece interesting, especially the concept of it. One element that I noticed at the beginning was that the sounds they used in the first minute, did make you feel like you were there, in space. Further When the speech begins the quiet background noise manages to create a very solemn atmosphere. A similar technique is used to create a much more eerie atmosphere near the end of the clip, where the man is talking about how the astronauts shall be mourned.

The producers used sound effects and music to enhance their story. Overall I think the sounds did make things more realistic, definitely more professional. The sound effects and various things they did at the end actually made me feel a bit sad, even if it wasn’t real.

Sound plays a major roll in how we experience the world around us. Sounds can set someone up for a jump scare, can make them feel sad and sympathetic, or likewise could put them in a happy mood. As I had mentioned in an earlier post I once had to do a presentation on a very dark and sad poem. Accompanying my poem’s words were similar dark Gothic pictures. In the background I played dark and somber music. By the end I had several classmates say “that was depressing”. This is one example of how audio can impact story telling. Those who made Moon Graffiti likewise effectively used sound to tell their story.

This week we had to watch several videos and view some resources regarding audio. In the first two minute video Jad Abumrad discusses something I found particularly interesting. The idea that since radio lacks images it allows the view to paint their own picture. Jad called this “Co-authorship”. Personally, while I’ve never thought about radio in that way this makes a lot of sense to me and I found it really interesting.

The Next video we watched was another video by Jad Abumrad. He argues that what he is doing is more like storytelling done by ancient shaman around campfires. he states that good “stories” induce a dream like state in the listeners much like a shaman would. Personally I disagree with his statement however. He does not provide much proof or solid reasoning behind his argument. Compared to the first video he does not get his point off nearly as well.

Finally we had to review audio resources on canvas. I found this decently helpful overall. I am however, not looking forward to having to use audacity. I have very no experience working directly on audio files so am nervous for that. Regardless I still found this site helpful.

When it comes to audio I mainly am a listener. I like a wide variety of music and often listen on my phone. There was one time however for a class in high-school that we had to make a presentation of a poem we had analyzed and present it to the class. Since my poem was dark and from medieval times. I played Gothic/classical music in the background of my presentation. This tied in with the dark looking medieval artwork I add in the background of my sidles. Tying these three elements in together shows that audio is only one part of story telling.

For my Daily creates I invented a flower and described what it would look like. Coincidentally enough my other daily create also had flowers on it. To create the happy marriage card I used Canva. Editing the blocks I came up with a nice and sleek looking greeting card that I am happy with. I also enjoyed inventing the flower. The idea for the “Rex flos scriptor” came to me pretty quickly. The reason I choose it was because it seemed like a flower that would exist in some medieval/fantasy setting. Which as I mentioned is my favorite genre of book.

@ds106dc My flower would be rex flos scriptor, or the King's Flower in Latin. The flower would have many thick leaves at the bottom that would be varying shades of green. It would have a long stem that leads up to the red crown shaped flower. #tdc2336#ds106

This week we also had two design assignments to do that were based on how we answered the question of the week. If you could change one thing in History what would it be? I said that I would change history so that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia failed. One design assignment was to design a book cover based off of our changed history. For the book cover I made a “Why the Revolution Failed” book featuring Lenin on the cover. As was mentioned in the beginning half of the week in the Ted videos there are various ways that a design can get a message across. For this reason I made the picture cooler and more grey.

My other design assignment along the similar theme was to design a picture that you might see in your alternative history. One assumption that I made was that if the Bolsheviks failed the Russian monarchy would have stayed in power. As such I took an image of the Kremlin. Using paint I erased a communist start that was visible in the picture. Then I placed a Imperial Russian flag over the Russian federation flag in the picture. Finally I wanted to contrast the cool dark image of the book cover with a bright and vibrant image. The purpose being to symbolize a potential brighter change in history.

The Final design assignment I did this week was to design a business card for a fake business. I enjoyed this much more then the other design assignments, for the reason that it was not as serious as the other ones. The project called for creating a simple but detailed card. This reminded me of Carson’s Ted video where he discussed how designs were getting more and more simple. I was also very happy with the result of this assignment and I believe it fulfills the requirements well

As I previously mentioned I was happy with the outcome of the business card assignment. I however had more trouble with the other two assignments. While I was happy with the book cover I wish my photo editor had a different font as I’m not the biggest fan of it. Additionally I am happy with the contrast the book cover has with the alternative image, however since I don’t own any editors like Photoshop, nor do I know how to use them, I felt limited in what I could do. I was happy with my daily creates this week as well. I feel I improved in participation from this week to from the last. I commented on more than four blogs, I loss count of how many, and multiple twitter posts. Overall I am happy with my weekly performance.

Apart of the theme of what if the Bolshevik revolution failed I needed to create an alternative history image. I thought of several various images I could create however in the end I decided to edit an image so the Imperial Russian flag was flying over the Kremlin instead of the Russian Federation Flag.

I started with an Image of the Imperial Russian Flag. I choose this image as the folds and crinkles in it would help give an appearance that the flag was moving. I desaturated the flag to help fit in better with the image of the Kremlin I choose. As well assuming as I did that if the Bolsheviks failed and Russia remained a monarchy the flag that they would have flying would be old and weathered.

Next the image of the Kremlin I choose is below. There was however One issue with the picture. It had a Communist star. If the revolution failed that wouldn’t have been there, using paint I was able to wipe away the star.

My next step was to work the Imperial flag over the Federal Flag. It took a bit of work but I eventually managed to overlay the photos over each other in word. Since I don’t own Photoshop I sadly could not use that. But I finally got the flag in to a position I liked.

I then Entered the photo in to an editing program I have called polar. I wanted to make sure the pictures blended in together more. To do this I used a tool to increase the temperature in the picture. The resulting image was this.

The Final step was for two reasons. First I wanted to counter the dreary cover of the book about communism and make this look nice and vibrant in comparison. Secondly I wanted to further help the two photos blend in with each other. As such I increased vibrancy by 50% and saturation by 35%. The Final Resulting Image was this.

I followed one of the links that it suggested to use for designing a logo. Once I got there it asked what the name of the company was and what type of company. I thought it would be funny since my last name is Flood do make the company a water provider.

The next part was deciding what type of card I wanted. I could choose from several types; but ended up choosing a logo based card as it would be something to be remembered by and also would serve as an attention grabber. I chose a water pump as it fit the water provider theme well. It was simple yet, got its message across.

The website then gave me two fonts and asked me to pick which was better. They did this several times in a row. At the end the website then generated a number of options for me to choose from in various fonts and styles. I choose this style as it was simple as was requested by the prompt but it was also detailed. The font was far from plan. Aswell, the water pump served to spice up the card.

In my midweek question I proposed a what if the communist revolution in Russia failed. For my book cover I choose to do a picture of Lenin speaking to a crowd. However there were a number of changes I wanted to make for my cover. The image I started with is directly below.

First thing I did using some photo editing software was change the overall temperature of the picture to something more cool and blue. The reason I wanted to do this was that cool blue reminded me of winter, which is often used as a literary tool to express loss or isolation. I felt that this would be a good aspect for the cover.

Next I wanted to decrease the photo’s saturation for two reasons. The first was to strengthen the theme of isolation. The second reason was to match the drab, dull, grey, communist stereotype that is often seen in Bolshevik photos and clothing. Again the program I was using had a saturation bar option in it.

With the cover looking how I like it the final step was to add a title.The program I was using thankfully had an add text option.

The Inner flap of the book would serve as a preface. It would explain that there was a communist uprising in Russia, however it ultimately failed. Then the main reasons for the failure would be outlined. Finally it would discuss briefly the ramifications the failed uprising had on the world and would then lead in to the book’s first chapter.

One aspect of this week that I found interesting was how one of the videos overlapped with a daily create I had done. I was tasked with tweet something in two different fonts that could result in a different interpretation or meaning of the sentence. Later in the week I watched the Ted videos, in the Carson video he talked about how fonts and style of writing can result in a different interpretation. I though this overlap pretty funny and coincidental.

@ds106dc I was struggling with Ideas on what to do for the daily create from Sunday. I finally had a breakthrough this morning. Once I saw this theme on the website I quickly came up with the idea to do a simple play off the original. #ds105#tdc2330pic.twitter.com/ZBiTwsQeQU

Here are two other daily creates that I worked on this week. I saw on the assignment that we had to do three and so I thought better safe then sorry. Both of these were hard to create. I was struggling with finding an idea that would fulfill the daily creates. However I eventually decided that I didn’t need to over complicate things and went for a simple design that was clear and related it back to class.

I was also able to relate the TED videos and Canva to my designblitz. I thought the designs of Canva were particularly appealing. They were clean, profession, simple, and yet they served their purpose. Certain designs that Scher showed, were in comparison hard to read. This was mainly due to the confusing angles and directions of the words. Additionally Carson noted that advertising has gotten increasingly simple in recent years. From this I wanted my pictures to be clear as well.

Overall I am happy with the work I did this week. While I have previously commented on tweets from classmates, this week I made sure to comment on multiple blogs of my classmates. I consider this an improvement from the first week. I wish some of my designblitz pictures were more unique. In aiming for cleanness the pictures became average in my opinion. While they do meet the principles they are meant to, I wish I was able to make them pop.

Now for the question of the week. If I could change one thing in history it would have to be making it so the Bolshevik uprising never occurred in Russia. I would choose this for the sheer benefits it would confer unto the world. If the uprising never happened Russia wouldn’t have slipped out of WW1. A two war front would have made it easier for the allies to advance on the western front and would have saved many lives in the war. Additionally if the Tsardom remained in power the estimated 40-60million people Stalin had killed wouldn’t have died under the relatively less harsh monarchy. Additionally the Cold war would have never happened has Russia would not be communist. The Korean war, Vietnam war, Mao Zedong’s rise to power in China, Pol Pot’s rise in Cambodia would also have been unlikely to occur given how heavily they were influenced by the Bolsheviks. Overall The world would be a lot more peaceful and various countries would of had a lot warmer relations with the U.S. if it wasn’t for the Bolsheviks.